I began teaching writing 30 years ago. Back then, the most sophisticated writing tool was a typewriter with a daisy wheel, and I had one. [Note to the under 40 crowd: A daisy wheel was a small, flat plastic wheel about the size of a mini dvd. It had spokes coming out from the center--hence the "daisy"--and a letter, number, or symbol at the end of each spoke. If you wanted to italicize a word, you took off the regular daisy wheel and snapped on the italic wheel. You typed your one word, then removed that wheel and put the regular one back on. Ditto for bold text.]

What did we teach? Organization. Support. Language clarity. Sentence structure. Punctuation and mechanics. And more important, the ideas behind the words. Someone whose name I've forgotten said "Good writing is clear thinking made visible." I love that line, and I think it applies to professional writing . But there is something else. Good writing helps the writer (is it okay if I switch point of view and use "you" instead of "the writer?" I think I heard a yes.) Redo: Good writing helps you get to places in your head you didn't know you were going. It helps you uncover levels below levels below levels. I know it was William Faulkner who said, "I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." Now that says it perfectly. When you get into the zone of really writing deep and hard and focused to the point where those little electric minnows are racing through your blood and you lose track of time and the only thing that matters is getting those words out, then you begin, begin to discover what it is you want to say. It is exhilarating and scary, and it is better than almost any feeling I know.

That is writing. It doesn't matter if you do it on a pad of purple paper, a daisy wheel typrewriter, or on a $3,000 Mac Pro with Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors, 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC), ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory. It doesn't matter if you have your own writing studio on the third floor with a skylight, mini-fridge, futon, and radiant heating (my old studio) or if you write in a crowded Starbucks or on your dorm room floor. None of that has a single thing to do with real writing and what happens when you get to it.

But what does all that have to do with professional writing today--daisy wheels and skylights and electric minnows? Organization, support, language clarity? Professional writing used to mean typing on good bond paper, using whiteout, and running your stuff off on a mimeograph machine. (Oh don't even ask. If you've never smelled mimeo fluid, you'll never get it.) Now it means writing for websites that use flash and knowing that your words can go from your keypad to every computer on earth with Internet access in less time than it takes to sip your latte. And none of that matters the least little bit. The best professional writers still pay careful attention to the basic elements of good writing. Dig for good ideas, then dig further. Uncover the mysteries. Use examples that will help your reader understand just what you are trying to say. Choose each word carefully by comparing it against other possible words and listening for the rhythm and tone and rightness of it. Put those great words and ideas and examples into clean sentences, and put those sentences into a clear structure that flows effortlessly. While you're sipping your latte, refrain from hitting "send" until you have read what you've written a few dozen times to see how and where you could make it better. Check the commas and colons and quotation marks. Do the work. Take the time. Believe that it matters.

If you do that, the past 30 years are just a blip on the screen--here and gone with the speed of a blinking cursor. What is timeless is what lasts, and good writing lasts.